Quote:
Originally Posted by TakeFive
Did you take a long siesta and just wake up?
The fact that developers have bought up tons of land over the last decade... the fact that it takes time to entitle land... the fact that their are master developers selling parcels to builders for development...
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I did take a siesta, it was quite nice but I also tend to zone out when the forum goes to homelessness. We spent $483 million last year on it for 6,100 people metrowide, almost $80k per person. We should absolutely be deriving better results for that kind of money.
As pertains housing, you're not wrong as to the level of activity but I don't look to one or ten or fifty projects to validate my beliefs on housing - that's what we call confirmation bias IMO. Rather, I look at data and interpret the objective result. We have significantly more people that want housing than there is available housing existing or proposed to satisfy the overall need and so prices will keep rising resulting in an elite city for the rich. To Bunt's point, we also don't produce it necessarily where people "want" to be but this issue is so overwhelming right now I don't think that distinction even matters anymore - people are going where they can survive at this point and have any housing or they are leaving Denver entirely, just like they're abandoning the coasts for Denver. So while you're buffet of development is spot on, the point is it's not nearly enough and it's being artificially held back. For me, as someone developing very large projects in Denver right now, land is the #1 throttle restrictor, followed by ongoing/generational labor issues in the trades which have resulted in astronomical cost increases the past decade, but pointedly in the last 5 years and an insane increase in 2021 as a result of supply chain.
I know you and many others think this is just the way it is, but it really doesn't have to be this way. We could open the floodgates so to speak with what Ken suggests, allow tri/four plex on every lot and meaningfully upzone (quickly) large swaths of transit corridors and arterials. This would help make available more land for development to more developers, including non-traditional developers who don't need a maze of administrative expertise and financial horsepower to navigate a complex zoning/permitting system for large projects. Permitting houses is easy...real easy comparatively. This kind of change has the effect of opening up more land for more diverse development options AND allowing for more people to develop housing. We often forget that up until the crazy administrative growth of permitting starting in the 90's, normal folks used to develop stuff all the time. Some row homes on an end block, a mom and pop shopping center, etc etc. Development doesn't have to be reserved for the sophisticated money, we could open it up to the average American household if we wanted to. Talk about equity...that's equity.